


I'll Always Find You

by agentx13



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, Vampire AU, sharon carter month
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-30
Updated: 2020-03-30
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:14:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23395336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agentx13/pseuds/agentx13
Summary: The super soldier serum has a side effect. But Sharon has promised to protect him, no matter what.
Relationships: Sharon Carter/Steve Rogers
Comments: 4
Kudos: 20
Collections: Sharon Carter Month





	I'll Always Find You

**Author's Note:**

> I completely forgot that I wrote this, lol. I found it last night in the folder to post today, and was like, "WHEN DID I WRITE AN 11-PAGE FIC? I WROTE A VAMPIRE AU???"
> 
> Anyway, enjoy!
> 
> (Another note - this is the last of the fics for Sharon Carter Month 2020. After this, I start posting Marvel's Thirteen every two weeks, and I'll try to have that edited and written and ready to go soon enough that I can write more fics for Sharon Carter Month 2021. Thank you to everyone who's been reading my fics! I'll have more for you... eventually!)

The thing is, she should kill him. Kill him right here in the alley next to their walk-up apartments. The real estate of the neighborhood will go down for a week and then recover.

She should kill him, right? Yes.

Probably.

But she can’t kill him. She’s taken an oath. She’ll protect him. To her dying breath, she’ll protect him.

He stares at her, blood on his chin. She knows he sees the gun. “You’re not a nurse,” he accuses.

“You’re not what I thought you were, either.” Her hands don’t shake, but there’s a chill in her very bones.

His features darken. “Say it. Say what I am.”

“This isn’t a fucking Twilight movie, asshole.”

He glares at her, then blinks. “Twilight.”

“Twilight,” she repeats.

“A movie,” he says.

She stares. “Are you seriously going to put it on your little list?”

“Not if you’re going to shoot me.”

Slowly, she lowers the gun. “I won’t. I can’t. I swore to protect you.”

He huffs a laugh, a hollow, ironic sound. “From what?”

“From yourself.”

He looks at her again, then licks the blood from the woman’s neck as she tries not to gag. “I’m going to ask Fury to reassign you. I know he put you here.”

“Yeah, _now_ you do, dumbass. After I gave myself away thinking you were in danger and needed backup.”

He looks amused again.

“But you won’t tell him,” she continues. She tries to keep her voice firm. “Because you’re never going to meet someone as dedicated to you as I am.”

“That so?”

She frowns. “No. Not… dedicated. But I swore to protect you, and I will.”

He sucks at the woman’s neck, seemingly lost in thought.

“Are you going to kill her?” she asks. She’s not sure what she’ll do if he’s going to kill her. She can’t let him kill people, can she?

“No. I don’t need that much.” He licks at the wounds again, and she sees they’re already closing. He watches her, curious. “I’ll make sure she gets home safe,” he promises.

But she doesn’t move until she’s sure he’s followed through and put her in a cab. After, they walk upstairs again, silent, and she catches him watching her curiously but refuses to meet his eye, only watching him curiously when she thinks he won’t notice.

They pause at their respective doors as if about to say more, but in the end, they separate.

That night, she dreams he’s watching her sleep. She wakes with a start, grabbing her gun from beneath her pillow as her heart hammers, pointing it into the shadows before placing it back. After all, what good is a gun against him? She rubs her temples. “Fucking Twilight bullshit,” she mutters.

A week passes. She can’t tell if he’s avoiding her, or if she might be avoiding him, but she doesn’t see him. Her report on his behavior is scant that week, but Fury accepts it. Sometimes, reports on him simply _are_ scant.

And that makes her wonder. She does research. Avoids being followed, avoids letting people know what she’s researching as best she can. None of the myths are quite right. But he was never like other people, was he.

She comes home from the library to find him waiting in the hall.

“I don’t sparkle,” he says, sounding dignified and indignant.

She looks at him sideways. “You sure about that?” She lets herself into her apartment, making a point of not inviting him in. She locks it behind her.

Of course, she realizes later, that myth doesn’t seem to apply to him, either. It’s not as if he asks for permission to infiltrate enemy bases before he goes in.

She tugs on a robe and knocks on his door. It’s four in the morning, but she doesn’t care if she wakes him up. Does he even sleep?

Yes, she decides when he opens the door. He’s rumpled with sleep, his hair delightfully askew and a pillow crease on his cheek. She shoves her way in, and he lets her. It’s only when she’s in his living room that she realizes she’s here without a weapon, and though she’s sworn not to kill him, he hasn’t said the same about her.

They face each other. He’s more awake now. He’s curious. She’s curious. He’s wary. So is she.

And now, standing here with a million questions on the tip of her tongue, she can’t think of anything to say.

“I can’t believe you watched that movie.”

“I can’t believe you’re so foul-mouthed.”

“Fuck you.”

He grins.

She holds up her middle finger. “Stake you, buddy,” she says boldly, hoping he’ll take it as a joke. She raises her other middle finger, too.

He raises an eyebrow. “I’m not sure a stake would work.”

She can’t tell if he’s amused. “Not the only thing you don’t have in common with other… you know.” She turns bends two of her fingers as if their fangs and mimics them biting down.

“I know.” He heads to the kitchen, and she gingerly follows. “I take it you turned off the bugs before coming over.”

She supposes she shouldn’t be surprised he knows about those. “Yeah. Looping sound.”

He nods. “You have questions.”

“Fuck yeah, I have questions.”

He leans against the counter and crosses his arms. “It’s a side effect of the super soldier serum,” he says. 

“That’s why you can go out at daylight.”

“I guess.”

“And you don’t need to be invited places.”

He shrugs.

“Can you eat garlic?”

“You asking me out for spaghetti?”

“I’m thinking about investing in a garlic farm.”

He grins. “I’m not allergic to garlic.”

“How did SHIELD not know?”

“I think because they didn’t want to,” he says. “When you have a propaganda tool, you don’t want people to know it’s a monster.”

She doesn’t argue. “Are there more?”

“Yes. Not many like me, though.” He hands her a cup of coffee, and she drinks automatically. “So why are you so set on protecting me?”

She watches him, debating whether or not to tell him. In the end, she decides it might help her chances of survival. “Peggy Carter is my great-aunt.”

“Ah,” he says. He looks at her steadily as if he can see into her soul.

“Have you thought about turning her?”

“Yes,” he answers, and she has no reason to doubt his honesty. “But she doesn’t need me anymore. I don’t think she even wants me anymore. We were children then. Basically children. And she has a family to see again.” He pauses. “Are you angry? Do you want me to save her?”

After a moment, she shakes her head. “I want her to have peace.”

He nods but looks troubled.

“Can you die?”

He almost laughs. “Of course I can. I just don’t know how yet.”

Her eyes narrow. “Have you tried to kill yourself?”

He refills her cup. “Yes.”

“You’re such a dumbass.”

He smiles, and there’s a glint in his eye. “Are you just saying that because you swore to protect me?”

“No.” She drinks her coffee some more. “You really are a dumbass.”

He laughs. It’s stronger than a week ago. “So. You’re Peggy’s great niece. She’s never mentioned you.”

She shrugs. “She can’t remember me anymore. Not unless she’s having a very good day.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be. Sometimes shit happens.”

“Tell me about yourself,” he says.

She scoffs. “I’m boring compared to you. You first.”

They end up on the couch, talking until they each have to get ready for work. At some point, it occurs to her that the only reason they would talk like this so much, the reason they tell each other things they haven’t told others, is if they both haven’t had anyone to talk to in ages. 

He holds the door open for her. “You come to me next time,” she tells him. “No more grabbing girls off the street.” Mrs. Calloway from down the hall gives them an odd look, and he looks embarrassed and awkward. “For sex,” she says quickly, so Mrs. Calloway won’t guess the truth.

He doesn’t even look at her as he closes the door on her.

* * *

He follows through, though, and she tries not to admit to him or anyone that it’s almost nice. It doesn’t hurt as much as she feared it would, and he holds her like she’s precious and stays to take care of her and make her food. The first time is spaghetti with extra garlic in the sauce. She thinks it’s a joke but isn’t sure.

The third time she asks him how he does it, how she thinks it’ll hurt more but it never does. He tells her that it’s a sort of trick, like a mild hypnosis. If he wanted, he says with just the slightest hint of a boast, he could make her forget him.

“Can you make people feel things?”

“Like what?” he asks.

She thinks of how nice it is to have his arms around her and his breath on her neck, how nice it is to hear him in her kitchen or moving around her apartment, taking care of her. 

“Nothing,” she says.

Her reports don’t change. They’re almost eerily mundane. But Fury never says anything about them, and she doesn’t either. Maybe Steve’s right, and people just don’t want to acknowledge that something might be off about him after all.

* * *

“Did you know?” she asks. SHIELD is in ruins. She’s technically a traitor. She’ll have to survive it all, overcome it all, but right now she doesn’t know how and part of her just wants to curl up and pretend none of this has happened.

He licks the cut on her arm. She likes to think she’s immune to the feel of his breath on her skin, of his tongue, but she knows she’s lying. “No. I didn’t know he survived.”

“Did you know he was like you?” she presses.

He doesn’t answer right away. It tells her all she needs to know.

“We have to find him,” she says.

“I know,” he tells her. And he sits on his heels, watching her and gently rubbing what would have been a scar on her arm. 

“This isn’t finding him,” she points out.

“I know.” His tone is quieter.

She doesn’t know how long they sit there, her on the couch, him on the floor, but they both jump at the knock on her door. In a flash, he’s pressed against the wall by the door, waiting to back her up, and she passes into kitchen to get a knife before going to answer the door.

Natasha stands there, her straight hair in slight disarray. “I need to talk to Steve.” She looks at Sharon’s arm, the knife wound already almost healed. “And I guess, you.”

* * *

Natasha is like him. She, too, has the serum. Sharon tries not to feel left out when they get together. She’s now a source for both of them, but both of them are careful, even kind. And Sam, as far as she can tell, is completely and utterly human.

She tries not to think of them as inhuman or animalistic in any way, but there’s something supernatural in the way they move. She’d never understood it before. Never noticed how unnatural it was. But now that she knows what they are, it’s all she can think about.

Well, nearly. They insist on training her to protect herself better, and they’re so fast that she has no time to focus on anything else during training. Fury gets in touch about applying to the CIA. She says nothing about how he’s alive and agrees to join. She hates to admit it, but she still feels like she’s on shaky ground. All she’d ever wanted to be was a SHIELD agent- what is she without that.

She does her best to help track down Bucky. Often, though, as her duties with the CIA become more numerous, she can’t get away as much. Instead, Steve finds her when he can’t put it off any longer. She lets him. She feels like she’s being used sometimes, _knows_ she’s being used, but she’d sworn to protect him, even from himself. And his arms feel so good around her, and his breath is so warm on her skin.

* * *

Peggy dies. It was bound to happen. The miracle is that it took so long. He’s invited to the funeral, but she barely notes his name on the list, she’s so busy with other things.

They meet up after at the wake. There’s talk of him retiring. Sam is trying to set them up.

“I forgot to tell him I knew your last name,” Steve says.

“I forgot to tell him. Forgot to tell a lot of people.” She shrugs. She hadn’t forgotten. She’d wanted people to see her for her. She’d told Steve, though. Why had she told Steve? Only to survive? Survive as what?

“You okay?”

“Yeah. No. I’m...” She shrugs again. “Life goes on.”

“Sucks, doesn’t it.” He grunts when she tilts her head. “Bad choice of words?”

“No.”

He glances at the crowd. “Do you ever think about death?”

“Of course.” She doesn’t ask if he thinks about it; she already knows he does.

He looks at her. “You aren’t scared?”

“I’m only afraid of what I won’t get to do,” she says slowly. “There’s a lot of life out there.”

“Yeah,” he says cautiously. “There is.”

* * *

They find Bucky. It’s part of someone else’s plan. None of them had ever considered framing him for terrorism before. Sharon’s a little miffed she hadn’t thought of it; it gets results.

Sharon has to help him get to Bucky twice before they meet under the overpass.

They talk some more. He looks at her, much as he has so many times before.

And this time he kisses her.

His breath is warm against her face, his arms are warm around her, and part of her is surprised to find herself running her hands through his hair and wishing she could do it more.

She pulls away. They have a mission. “Time and place.”

“Yeah,” he says, unconvinced. “You know, you can still go. I’ll find you. After.”

She shrugs. “I said that I’d protect you, remember.” She looks dubiously at his Beetle. “But I don’t think there’s room for me in there.”

He grimaces. “You might have a point.” He waves, and the guys pile into her slightly larger car.

“Sorry I tried to kill you,” Bucky greets her.

“Like you’re the only one who’s tried.”

In the end, she doesn’t join them for the fight. She pulls into a hotel for them to make sure Steve and Bucky are as prepared for the fight as possible. Bucky hasn’t fed in too long, and she doesn’t want Steve to go into battle with less than he needs. It’s the best way she can help, so she does what she can. They stage it for Sam’s benefit. Steve wants Sam to think he’s just a super-powered Steve, says it’ll make things too complicated if Sam knows. Sharon thinks he’s just afraid of Sam’s potential reaction, but it isn’t her secret to tell. So they lie about setting up a safe house there and go into a room. Bucky takes time to apologize and leaves while Steve says goodbye. He tucks her in after and kisses her forehead. She hears him telling Sam something about knocking her out so she wouldn’t get hurt, and she falls asleep while Sam argues with him.

* * *

She wakes the next day with a killer hangover. She goes to a corner store a couple blocks away and steals food and some other provisions, her movements automatic. Back in the hotel room, she rests some more as she makes her way through her ill-gotten gains and watches the news. The fugitive Avengers had been caught.

He’d find her. He’d find her.

The captured teammates were on the Raft. Steve Rogers and James Barnes, also known as Bucky, were still at large.

She lets out a gasp of air that she didn’t know she’d been holding. She makes herself shower and get cleaned up. She forces herself to eat a full meal at a restaurant nearby. And then she drives toward the coast. She doesn’t know what she’ll do when she gets there. She doesn’t know where the Raft is. But she knows Steve will go to save his teammates.

And she has to protect him.

* * *

It takes over ten hours to drive to Calais using back roads. She stops to buy food and use the bathroom, but otherwise she sleeps in the car. In Calais, it’s easy enough to arrange passage off the books to Dover. England is trickier, but with increased automation, it’s easy enough to slip onto a boat. She sleeps most of the way to the US, knowing she’ll need her strength and also unable to hold sleep off any longer.

It’s only when she’s disembarking that she realizes she has no idea what she’s doing. She doesn’t know where the Raft is. Doesn’t know how to find it. She doesn’t know how he’ll find her. But she doesn’t doubt that he will.

She forces herself to slow down. She has drop boxes in locations up and down the East Coast, and she accesses a few. She has three IDs she’s bought on the black market – Peggy had always been a stickler for having backup plans for backup plans – and she poses as a tourist as she makes her way down the coast. She’s trained herself over time not to have a Southern accent, but now, she leans into it more. She blends in with so many other slender blondes at the beach that she’s reasonably confident Interpol will never think to check for her here. Wherever she is. After all, it isn’t as if she’s doing anything. She doesn’t know what to do but wait.

* * *

She finds things to do. She can’t help it. He takes too long. She gets bored. The cops only have so many resources, and she’s more comfortable with doing some things they would never do. Beating up rapists and abusers, for instance. Beating them up too badly to be sure they’ll survive. Part of her enjoys being able to let loose a little. But it doesn’t bring him to her any faster.

She’s almost given up. She hasn’t forgotten him. Could never forget him. But he isn’t there and it’s been so long.

“ _There_ you are,” a familiar voice says, and she turns to find Natasha wearing an obnoxiously large sunhat and sunglasses. Natasha slides in beside her. “The boys are getting drinks.”

Sharon stares at her, then stabs a fry at her. “You’re all overly fucking late,” she says.

“What? You think he’d abandon you?” Sharon glowers at her, and Natasha grins. “I didn’t think so.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing.”

And then he appears, and Natasha seems to fade into the background. She can’t remember her conversation with Sam, can’t remember why Bucky isn’t there. All her attention is on Steve. Later, she isn’t sure if she and Steve left on their own or if they’re chased away by the others, but they’re in her hotel room, and she’s in her arms again.

“Did you hypnotize me?” she asks.

“No,” he says, confused.

Good, she thinks, though she also has to wonder if it makes a difference. She buries her face in his neck. “That was too long.”

“What was?”

“You being gone.”

He grins. “Were you worried?”

“Yes, you dumbass.”

He laughs softly. “I agree.” He pauses. “Hey. You said before you weren’t afraid of dying, just of leaving things undone. Do you still think that?”

She nods, and he kisses her. This time, there’s no mission after, and she gives just as much as she gets. Her veins are on fire, her skin is flushed. It’s heady and all-consuming and she wants more but can only last so long.

He holds her after, and she’s glad to have some semblance of purpose again. She’ll protect him, she thinks. Even if it’s the last thing she does.

* * *

Protecting him tends to involve letting him and Natasha feed from her when they need it. If Sam notices something going on, he doesn’t mention it. And Sharon can still work from the sidelines and in a support capacity most of the time. And with him and Natasha taking care of her, she recovers more quickly afterward than she had during the airport episode, enough that she’s on her own mission when she hears about Thanos. She hurries home, but she isn’t fast enough, and Steve and Natasha are shaken, maybe even broken.

She supports them as best she can. It’s one of the few things she can do. But Steve worries her. He insists that he’s done. He doesn’t want to do this anymore. He puts aside the shield. Sam is gone. Bucky is gone. And Sharon is afraid she isn’t enough.

They live in a changed world for four years. She finally has more missions than she knows what to do with. She has more purpose. She also has more irritation. He’s turned paranoid. He might, she thinks sometimes, be insane. 

“If you bring that compass to bed with you, I’m setting you both on fire,” she warns him.

He closes the compass and comes to bed, but does nothing but sleep uneasily that night and several others.

In the third year, Natasha tells her, “I wouldn’t mind dying. But I can’t now. Not until I make this right.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Sharon argues.

But Natasha does answer, only heals the bite marks and goes on her way.

In the fourth year, Steve talks about death, too, and Sharon starts to worry. “Don’t leave me,” she tells him.

“But if you die, you’d leave me.”

“You don’t know that for sure,” she says.

“I’ve seen enough death to be pretty sure.”

“I’ve seen enough of you to know you’re a dumbass.”

He rubs his beard. “What if you didn’t have to die?”

He can’t mean what she thinks he might mean. She shrugs. Doesn’t ask for clarification. “I said I’d protect you.”

* * *

He drinks too much. She only realizes later, after the headache has subsided, that he’d done it on purpose. He comes home afterward, when everyone is back and everything is chaos.

“What if you protect me forever?” he asks. His beard is gone. “For the rest of our lives?”

“Someone’s got to,” she says.

She doesn’t realize how much it’ll hurt, how much her body will burn as it’s remade, but he’s there every step of the way. When the pain finally subsides, he takes her hunting. They can feed from a deer without killing it, if they’re careful.

“This is some Twilight bullshit,” she mutters. But she drinks, because she’s thirsty, and this is the only way to make that ache go away.

He chuckles. “I’m retiring. I don’t want to be Steve Rogers, Captain America, anymore. I’m giving the shield to Sam.”

She shrugs. “I can work with that.”

“I have to give him the shield. He’ll know I’m alive.”

“How’d you even get the shield? Didn’t yours break?”

“I know people in Wakanda, Sharon.”

“And I’ll bet they love you, given how well Wakanda did in the Snap.”

“I’m not invited back, if that’s what you mean.”

“Uh-huh. Don’t worry. I’ve got you covered.”

It takes work, but she was a SHIELD agent. Soon, they both have new identities, and she’s got a mask for Steve.

“So this is how I’d look if I still aged naturally,” he says, surveying his reflection.

“I should have made your new name Scrotum McGee.”

“Language,” he chides.

“Fuck you.” She hands him the shield. “Go retire.”

“And then I’ll find you.”

“You always do.”


End file.
